The saga of the
honey bee and humanity has been intertwined since the start of the earliest
civilizations. This body of work is intended to explore the human control over a
functioning hierarchy, this being the hive. It is a study of the relationship
of work and labor of honey bees, their self governance, and balance of
interaction with humans. Non Nobis (Latin, we work, but not
for ourselves) is a term that was coined to describe the constant
labor of a worker bee, and how her work is for a greater good: the survival of
the colony.

In this context, Non
Nobis is meant to describe the relationship between the bee and the
keeper, who harvests the honey and uses bees as a tool for pollination. The
cultural dependence of beekeeping has long been a subject that was transferred
visually through art. Primitive drawings of man collecting honey were scrawled
on the walls of a Spanish cave, and Renaissance painters would capture the sexual
quality of the hive by depicting Cupid,dripping with honey surrounded by bees.

The
bees’ care not of my presence, they worry not of my photographs. They resume
dutifully to a never ending workload, never sleeping, just as they have done before
the origin of mankind. In a way I am just another explorer in a vast pool of
those who have pondered the magnificent structure of the beehive. Unlike these
forefathers, I am able to exploit the gift of the photographic process to visualize
these inner workings and explore how power is divided throughout a colony.